by Keith Bassham
Living under pressure I feel fortunate in many ways that I live as a Christian in this time and place. I wonder if I could have withstood persecution, prosecution, and torture alongside the likes of Polycarp, Huss, Tyndale, or more contemporary martyrs of the faith. My experience, and the experience of most reading this I am sure, is more like that described by the preaching professor Fred Craddock.
Craddock tells a story about his call to the ministry that came during an inspirational meeting in his youth. He made a decision in his bunk that night. He says,
“I pictured myself standing in front of the military firing squad and being told, ‘Deny Jesus and live.’ I bravely told the story of Jesus and the command was given, ‘Ready, aim fire!’ Flags were at half mast, widows were crying, and a monument was erected where I gave my life for Christ.
Nobody told me that I couldn’t give my life for Christ by writing one big check. Instead it has been decades of writing little checks. Eighty-five cents here, a dollar thirty-nine there. Giving my life for Christ has meant being faithful in the small things over and over throughout my life.”
And so while few of us may be asked to “write the big check,” we all experience the pressures that require the dayto- day faithful discipline Mr. Craddock describes. As North American Christians see their elected officials, non-elected bureaucrats, and appointed justices enact laws ever more hostile to their beliefs, and as we see the bad guys getting away with the kinds of activity described by David’s psalms, and when the economic and social pressures start to cause suffering, those small prices of obedience could rise.
But such times call for more and not less Christian faithfulness. After all, the book of Hebrews declares that Jesus learned “obedience by the things which he suffered.” The Puritan John Owen enlightens us and corrects any misunderstanding, “Here it says about the Lord Christ that he learned obedience, not that he learned to obey.”
He goes on, “The Lord Christ learned obedience when he experienced it in practice. One special kind of obedience is intended here, namely, a submission to great, hard, and terrible things, accompanied by patience and quiet endurance and faith for deliverance from them. This Christ could have not experience of, except by suffering the things he had to pass through, exercising God’s grace in them all. Thus, Christ learned obedience.”
And so it is with those who would follow Christ. Owen explains that outward pressures “give a necessity and especial occasion unto the exercise of those graces wherein our obedience in that season doth consist. So from them, or by them, did the Lord Christ himself learn obedience; for by reason of them he had occasion to exercise those graces of humility, self-denial, meekness, patience, faith, which were habitually resident in his holy nature, but were not capable of the peculiar exercise intended but by reason of his sufferings.”
I can think of all sorts of ways this could work to our advantage. Even now the financial pressures (both general and more specific to ourselves and our Fellowship) are creating an “occasion to exercise those graces.”
John Piper, pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota, preached earlier this year a sermon, “What Is the Recession For?” Among God’s purposes he sees are:
- To expose hidden sin and so bring us to repentance and cleansing.
- To wake us up to the constant and desperate condition of the developing world where there is always and only recession of the worst kind.
- To relocate the roots of our joy in His grace rather than in our goods — in His mercy rather than our money, in His worth rather than our wealth.
- To advance His saving mission in the world — the spread of the gospel and the growth of His church — precisely at a time when human resources are least able to support it. This is how he guards His glory.
- To bring His church to care for its hurting members and to grow in the gift of love.
As I say, such times call for more, not less, from us, and these things are accomplished by those living for the faith rather than dying for it.
Speaking of faithful service, Park Crest Baptist Church will host a special Retirement Sunday for Pastor Gary Grey, Sunday, May 17. Pastor Grey, who also serves as president of the BBFI, resigns the pulpit after 18 years at Park Crest, and after several decades of service to the Lord and to the Fellowship. Gary Grey will be available for preaching conferences and special meetings. Be sure to come to the May Graduation Fellowship Meeting and greet Gary and Carla Grey as they embark on a new phase of ministry.